Spirituality Studies 9-2 Fall 2023 11 Martin Dojčár Bhagavan often used “heart” as a synonym for ātma-svarūpa, which is the source and substance of ego and all other things, being alone what actually exists and is therefore real, as he says in the first sentence of the seventh paragraph of Nāṉ Ār?: “What actually exists is only ātma-svarūpa” [9]. As I explained earlier, the “five sheaths” (Sa. pañca-kōśa) constitute the body that ego mistakes itself to be, so it is only through ego that the ultimate “heart”, “I am”, is linked or related to the “five sheaths”, as Bhagavan indicates in verse 24 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu: “The insentient body does not say I; existence-awareness does not rise; in between one thing, I, rises as the extent of the body. This is ‘cit-jaḍa-granthi’, bondage, soul, subtle body, ego, this ‘saṁsāra’ and mind” [10]. “The insentient [Sa. jaḍa] body does not say I” is a metaphorical way of saying that the body consisting of “five sheaths” (Sa. pañca-kōśa) is not aware of itself as “I”, because it is jaḍa (Sa. “insentient” or “non-aware”). “Existence-awareness [Sa. Sat-Cit] does not rise” means that Sat-Cit, which is ātma-svarūpa, the ultimate “heart”, does not ever come into existence, because it is eternal and immutable, so it always exists and shines as it is without ever undergoing any change of any kind whatsoever. “In between one thing, I, rises as the extent of the body” means that something rises as “I am this body”, thereby seemingly linking Sat-Cit, which is the pure awareness “I am”, to the body, which is not aware. Since this “I” that rises as something that is limited to the extent of the body is aware of itself as “I”, it is not the body, because the body is jaḍa and therefore not aware of itself or anything else, and since it rises and is limited to the extent of the body, it is not Sat-Cit, because Sat-Cit does not rise and can never be limited. Therefore this “I” is neither the body nor Sat-Cit but a spurious entity that appears between them, so to speak, borrowing the properties of each (namely the limited form of the body and the existence and awareness of Sat-Cit) and thereby conflating them as if they were one. This “I” is therefore what is called cit-jaḍa-granthi, the “knot” (Sa. granthi) formed by the seeming entanglement of “pure awareness” (Sa. Cit) with a body, which is “non-aware” (Sa. jaḍa). Pure awareness is SatCit, which is of course never entangled with anything, but in the view of ego it seems to be entangled, because ego borrows its existence and awareness as “I am” from Sat-Cit and then conflates this “I am” with the body as “I am this body”. Since this knot is what seemingly binds us to all the limitations of “embodied existence” (Sa. saṁsāra), Bhagavan says that it is both bondage and saṁsāra. It is also what is called “ego” and the “soul” (Sa. jīva), and it is what is called “mind” when this term is used in the sense of ego, which is the subject or knowing element of the mind, as opposed to all the other elements of the mind, which are objects known by it. It is also what is called the “subtle body” in some contexts, such as when it is said that after the death of one physical body the “subtle body” is what transmigrates to another physical body, but not in other contexts, such as when three of the “five sheaths”, namely the life, mind and intellect, are described as the “subtle body” (Sa. sūkṣmaśarīra). This cit-jaḍa-granthi, which is ego, is sometimes referred to as the “heart-knot” (Sa. hṛdaya-granthi), because it is the primal knot, the knot that is the root and heart of all other knots, so though other knots are spoken about in various kinds of yoga and tantra, they need not concern us if we are following the path of self-investigation, because self-investigation is the means to sever this original knot, namely ego, and when this knot is severed all other knots will cease to exist along with it. Regarding the difference between the yoga and jñāna perspectives, I will say a little about the difference between the classical yoga of Patanjali and the path of jñāna (Sa. “knowledge” or “awareness”) taught by Bhagavan. As Patanjali says in Yōga Sūtra 1.2, “yoga is restraint of mental activity” [11], but according to Bhagavan stopping mental activity will not eradicate ego but will result only in manōlaya
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjkyNzgx